Squared Away
Privacy policy
Squared Away is built so that we can't see the bills, balances, or chores of your household, or the costs of your trips. There are no accounts, ads, analytics, or trackers. What syncs is encrypted on your device with a key our server never receives.
What stays on your devices
Everything you enter: names, expenses, payments, chores, kids' allowances and savings goals, and payment handles like a Venmo username. It's stored on each phone or browser that's part of your household, and it's readable only there.
How syncing works
Each household has a random key, created on the device that started it. Every change is encrypted with that key (AES-256-GCM) before it leaves the device. The key travels only inside invite links and computer link codes, in the part of the link after the "#", which browsers never send to any server.
Anyone who has your invite link can open your household. Share it only with people you trust, the way you would a house key.
What our server stores
- Encrypted changes, each with a random ID, the order it arrived in, and when it arrived. We can't decrypt them.
- A one-way hash (SHA-256) of an access code derived from your key, so only devices with the key can read or add changes.
- When you link a computer, a one-time encrypted package for that computer. It's deleted as soon as the computer picks it up, or after 10 minutes.
We don't store names, email addresses, phone numbers, contacts, or location, because we never ask for them.
IP addresses and our host
Squared Away runs on Cloudflare, which handles every request to squaredaway.cloud. To stop abuse, our server counts how often an IP address creates a household or links a computer. Those counts are deleted within an hour. We've turned off request logging and Cloudflare's analytics. Cloudflare processes network data to deliver and protect traffic under its own privacy policy.
Payment apps
When you tap a payment link, such as Venmo, Cash App, or PayPal, that app opens with the amount filled in. Zelle has no link, so for Zelle the app copies the email or phone number someone saved, and you send the money in your bank's app. Squared Away never moves money and never sees your payment accounts. The payment app's own privacy policy applies there.
Backups and recovery
Every household and trip syncs from the moment it's created, encrypted as described above, so you can get it back if a device is lost, reset, or the app is deleted. There are three ways back, and none of them lets us, Google, or Apple read your data:
- Your recovery link. It's the household's invite link, saved by you, for example in a password manager. Anyone with it can open the household.
- Android's backup. On Android, the app's data, including the household keys, is included in Android's backup to your Google account only when that backup is encrypted with your phone's screen lock, so Google can't read it.
- iCloud Keychain. On iPhone, the household keys are kept in iCloud Keychain, which Apple encrypts end to end.
Deleting your data
- From a device: delete the app, or choose "Unlink this computer" in the web app's Settings.
- From our server: choose "Delete from the server" in the web app's Settings. This erases every encrypted change and the access hash for everyone in the household. Only a marker remains so the same ID can't be reused. Devices keep their own copies until you remove them.
Sharing and selling
We don't sell or share your data, and we couldn't read it if we wanted to. If we're legally required to hand over what we store, all we have is encrypted data we can't decrypt.
Kids
Squared Away is for the whole family, kids included. A parent can add a kid to their household to keep track of the kid's chores and allowance, and a kid can use a simpler kid view on a parent's device or their own.
We don't collect personal information from anyone, including children under 13. There's no account to create, no ads, and no analytics. What a parent enters about a kid, like their name, chores, allowance, and savings goal, is encrypted on the device like everything else, so we can't read it.
The kid view and the optional parent PIN are settings on one device, and they're never sent to our server. The kid view hides the bills; it doesn't lock them. Every device in a household holds the household's key, so anyone using one can read all of that household. The PIN keeps a kid in the kid view on a device you hand over, and it isn't encryption.
A parent can see, change, or remove anything about their kid in the app at any time, and can erase the whole household from our server with "Delete from the server".
Changes
If this policy changes, we'll update this page and the effective date above. If a change affects what leaves your device, we'll also say so in the app.
Contact
Questions? Email support@squaredaway.cloud.